Cable Forum - View Single Post

Alien · 12-10-2006, 20:44

I don't post here often, so I hope nobody minds me adding my input to this topic.

I'm sure some of you may be familiar with the strategy of blocking various ad/spyware/etc sites in the Hosts file, but the more experienced computer users are probably also aware of its limitations [if a site has stuff on various subdomains you have to have an entry for each subdomain]. DNSKong gives you a bit more flexibility on DNS-based site blocking. Although it doesn't offer wildcard functionality, in the sense of being able to replace characters with a *, it does let you put in just 1 [or more] "words" [I forget the correct term] of a url. For example, you could have an entry like spammysoftware & it would block anything like ads.spammysoftware.com, banners.spammysoftware.net etc, but wouldn't block banners.spammysoftware1.com. It's not ideal, but it's considerably better than the Hosts file method.

A few things I should mention about it though:

The logging function doesn't automatically chop off the beginning X no. of lines when the log gets to Y no. of lines long, so if you want to use the logging feature then it's a good idea to check on it every now & then & empty it once it gets into 6-figures [number of lines, I mean]. It can be a bit heavy on a browser [which is how it's viewed by default, DNSKong sends it to your browser when you use the tray icon command to do so] once it gets that big, though you could manually view it in a decent text editor.
There used to be a link on the pyrenean site to various filter sets for DNSKong, though the link appears to no longer work. DNSKong does come with a couple of sets of filters, but saying they're a bit out of date would be an understatement. All is not lost though, as I make my own, based on the well-known winhelp2002 hosts file. Admittedly, I don't update my filters as often as that guy does the hosts file [though I've just finished updating them today], but then due to the nature of how DNSKong works my filter blocks more than his does anyway.
If you go to the site of a business that you know is legit, but either the entire page or maybe just it's images won't load, it could be because the site uses the Akamai caching service. There are a lot of legit companies who use Akamai, but there are also a lot of advertising companies who use them as well, so my filter has all Akamai servers blocked by default, though a few legit 1s are listed in the pass filter. If you want to use my filters, you can either do what I do & unblock [by adding to pass.txt] as necessary, or just remove the relevant entries from named.txt & replace them with the full/specific URLs of Akamai-hosted adservers from the original hosts file.

12-10-2006, 20:44	#45
Alien Inactive Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: UK Services: VM Phone, V+, VM 10Mb Posts: 2,655	Re: Security and antivirus web links I don't post here often, so I hope nobody minds me adding my input to this topic. I'm sure some of you may be familiar with the strategy of blocking various ad/spyware/etc sites in the Hosts file, but the more experienced computer users are probably also aware of its limitations [if a site has stuff on various subdomains you have to have an entry for each subdomain]. DNSKong gives you a bit more flexibility on DNS-based site blocking. Although it doesn't offer wildcard functionality, in the sense of being able to replace characters with a *, it does let you put in just 1 [or more] "words" [I forget the correct term] of a url. For example, you could have an entry like spammysoftware & it would block anything like ads.spammysoftware.com, banners.spammysoftware.net etc, but wouldn't block banners.spammysoftware1.com. It's not ideal, but it's considerably better than the Hosts file method. A few things I should mention about it though: The logging function doesn't automatically chop off the beginning X no. of lines when the log gets to Y no. of lines long, so if you want to use the logging feature then it's a good idea to check on it every now & then & empty it once it gets into 6-figures [number of lines, I mean]. It can be a bit heavy on a browser [which is how it's viewed by default, DNSKong sends it to your browser when you use the tray icon command to do so] once it gets that big, though you could manually view it in a decent text editor. There used to be a link on the pyrenean site to various filter sets for DNSKong, though the link appears to no longer work. DNSKong does come with a couple of sets of filters, but saying they're a bit out of date would be an understatement. All is not lost though, as I make my own, based on the well-known winhelp2002 hosts file. Admittedly, I don't update my filters as often as that guy does the hosts file [though I've just finished updating them today], but then due to the nature of how DNSKong works my filter blocks more than his does anyway. If you go to the site of a business that you know is legit, but either the entire page or maybe just it's images won't load, it could be because the site uses the Akamai caching service. There are a lot of legit companies who use Akamai, but there are also a lot of advertising companies who use them as well, so my filter has all Akamai servers blocked by default, though a few legit 1s are listed in the pass filter. If you want to use my filters, you can either do what I do & unblock [by adding to pass.txt] as necessary, or just remove the relevant entries from named.txt & replace them with the full/specific URLs of Akamai-hosted adservers from the original hosts file.